Network-based marketplaces generally allow customers to purchase items online. Some network-based marketplaces facilitate the listing of items from a seller and the purchase of those items by a buyer. Network-based marketplaces typically strive to achieve a pleasant experience for buyers in order to increase revenue. Part of this experience is often a wide selection of quality products from which a buyer may choose. Often, the network-based marketplace cannot verify the quality or other attributes of products that are listed by sellers. Sometimes, inattentive or even unscrupulous sellers may list items in a way which misrepresents or omits data important to a buyer making an informed decision to purchase the item. For example, the authenticity of a painting may be disputed. Knowing whether or not the painting is a forgery would likely influence the price a buyer would be willing to pay for the painting. The presence of item listings misrepresenting the items in those listings may adversely impact the buyer's experience with the network-based marketplace, reducing trust and use of the network-based marketplace and thereby decreasing the network-based marketplace's revenue.
Network-based marketplaces typically attempt to combat poor seller behavior by using a reporting system. For example, buyers may be able to rank various attributes of a seller that others may see. Typically such ranking systems are broadly focused on aggregating the behavior of the seller so that users may infer, for example, future trustworthiness based on past actions. In other examples, a party may report specific abuses which the network-based marketplace may then investigate and act upon. Typically such reporting systems are time intensive, as false claims may be numerous, and also expensive because of the manual interventions involved.